"No'm, not when things suits him, but you ought to see him when he is
mad. Golly! Why, even the cops lets that kid alone."

"But it isn't parliamentary--I mean, it isn't proper to have one election
after another like this. We chose one captain, and we ought to stand by
him."

"That wasn't no quorum what elected him, ma'm," said Ern Swanson, smiling
broadly. "They was only eight in the club then, and now we got
twenty-three. That little bunch o' Greasers couldn't represent us. No,
ma'm. We want regular Americans at the head of this club, and so we had a
regular election."

Eveley knew this was dead against American principles, and she looked
once more toward the sulking ex-captain. Then she remembered that he had
won his own election in her absence by plain coercion, and decided to
pass this one irregularity, but never again.

"Very well, then," she said weakly, "have it your own way this time. But
there must be no more elections until the right time. Now, what are you
going to do? Have a practise game? Then suppose we let Ivan be captain of
the second team, anyhow, and you can pick your men and have a good game."

This seemed a simple proposition to Eveley in her innocence, but on a
sudden, pandemonium reigned. The whole crowd of boys propelled itself
violently into the air, and there was a shrieking of voices and a tossing
of bats and gloves, and a seemingly endless number of arms flying about.
From out the clamor Eveley could distinguish repeated hoarse roars of
"Pi-i-i-i-tcher," "Pi-i-i-i-tcher," "Ca-a-a-a-a-atcher," "Ca-a-a-a-atcher,"
and she retired to a remote spot to await the proper moment for gathering
up the remains. Being a lady, she could make no sense at all of the deadly
uproar, and she was quite thrilled and charmed when of a sudden the tumult
subsided, and she found that out of that apparently aimless clamor, two
teams had been selected and the players assigned to their various positions
on the field. It was black magic to her.

Eveley thought she knew baseball. She knew what a "foul" was, and she
knew what happened when one passed four balls, and she knew when one was
out. And she had often said fatuously that she loved baseball, because
she understood it. But she did not understand it. She understood a mild
respectable game that was played by scholarly young men in college.
Baseball as played by the wild creatures on that Saturday afternoon was a
sealed book to her. And she devoutly hoped and pr